


the value of green onions

by ishka



Category: Free!
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 01:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5893630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/pseuds/ishka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you crack an egg into cup noodles, it makes the entire thing seem like it has weight, and at least adds a bit of protein to offset the sodium.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the value of green onions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maybeillride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeillride/gifts).



> A one-off comment about the Matsuoka kids and the implications of growing up in a single-income household got out of control. [Teresa](http://maybeillride-changemylife.tumblr.com) gave me the ammo so this is for her. ;0

If you crack an egg into cup noodles, it makes the entire thing seem like it has weight, and at least adds a bit of protein to offset the sodium.

Sometimes- if she remembered to, had the energy to, and had the change; a perfect storm that did not occur often- his mother would pick up a bunch of fresh green onion to chop into it too, heat it up while Rin played a round of keepaway outside with Gou, and serve it in the nice bowls. The seashell-white porcelain ones with delicate mint-green foliage work around the rim and base. She would tell them it was a special dinner from a shop nearby, and Rin only thought to question that once he earned his right to travel farther than the last light post on the street on his own and realized there never was a shop nearby, and that takeout is never served in chipped hand-me-downs from great uncles.

When he wondered aloud his findings, his mother confessed her secret, but only if he promised not to tell Gou who still lit up at the sight of Mom’s invention. He wanted to work too to earn _real_ take-out for them all, and his mother only laughed and said she had just the thing, and what great timing for Rin to want to help the family out then when the docks were hiring?

Getting to spend the evening after school on the docks was a privilege, and Rin often found it lauded over his head in exchange for chores and good grades. On the bulletinboard the fishermen hung up at the cleaning station that kept a running list of boats out to sea and boats docked using a series of hooks and keychains, his name was always at the bottom etched crookedly in permanent marker, the title of _Steward_ awarded to him under boats docked, and _Lady Luck_ to Gou among the boats out to sea. 

The fishermen cast nets and hooks and the dockhands secured the boats and Rin protected Gou. Those were the three jobs, and with a serious, steely look in his eye and two heavy hands on either of Rin’s small and narrow shoulders, Dad’s oldest friend told him that no one job was more or less important than the other. Letting go of his sister’s hand when they walked along the pier was the same as losing a net full of the day’s catch, the same as failing to secure a vessel and letting the tide steal it away, and workers who made such mistakes wouldn’t be welcome back. 

So even when Gou begged him to, he didn’t let her go, because there _always_ had to be a Matsuoka on the dock, and he wasn’t about to be _fired_ ; Mom told him his job was invaluable after all. 

Just after sundown, whether it was winter or summer, Mom would stop and talk to Dad’s old friend before seeking them out wherever they’d scampered off to among the closed and shuttered market stalls. Gou would always giggle and give away their hiding spot, and their mother would sigh with telltale tired hands on her hips behind her apron- the blue one when she spent the day at the convenience store, the red one when she was needed in the boutique, sometimes wearing one with the other limply hanging in her grasp depending on how the schedules overlapped- and entice them home with a promise of something warm or cool depending on the season. 

_The Steward of Iwatobi_ was the coolest job he ever had, and he often gushed to both of his friends at Sano about it until they told him to stuff it. Even when he caught Mom near the end of his final summer as a Steward, uttering on fragile, careless syllables: “ _thanks for always watching them”_ , he pretended it didn’t mean what it did, somehow.

On the day she told Rin and Gou that the Steward and Lady Luck’s services were no longer required on the fishing docks of Iwatobi, he was old enough to yell at her for lying, and not old enough to feel remorse in doing so. Still, she took them both out to a restaurant and let them order what they wanted, the last time they’d gone out to eat having been with his father too, and also never having formed a lasting memory in Rin’s mind. She told them they earned it all by themselves from all their hard work, but by then he knew better.

He was old enough for way too many things that Gou wasn’t. Old enough to ask for lists of toys for his birthday, old enough to borrow the catalogues from friends that Mom just never seemed to get in the mail like they did, and old enough to color code the toys he wanted by importance and need with thick, determined circles made by his meticulously managed eight-color box of markers _including_ a pristine yellow that had yet to be dragged through black. Old enough to sit his mom down and politely ask with barely bitten back enthusiasm: “ _pleasepleaseplease?”_

Old enough to ask and not old enough to understand why he may as well have asked her for the moon. She let him pick out one thing every year, and it was a decision he’d agonize over for days. 

He was old enough that he knew exactly what his closest friends were doing when they gave him their toys to play with on the weekends, and young enough to borrow them anyway to continue his story about the Space Monster That Destroys the City (made of pots and pans) in episodic installments, leading up to the ending the world never saw coming: a broken space monster, and a sobbing, caught-red-handed baby sister. 

His friend told him it was okay; he didn’t like that toy anyway, but his downturned eyes and his perpetual pout falling _poutier_ than usual said differently.

With hopes of making a sequel dashed, Rin moved onto the next dream, the next friends, the next school. If he couldn’t be a _Steward of Iwatobi_ anymore, he’d just go ahead and settle for swimming, he _guessed_. He’d settle for teamwork, and the first notion of _value_ he’d ever known. Because the Iwatobi boys didn’t have a lot of toys, and their clothes were about as plain as his. They cared about the pool, where toys and nice clothes didn’t belong. 

The louder he boasted about it, the more sure he felt this was _definitely_ the next best thing, the quieter his mother grew, and the more often she picked up extra hours at work. To the point where he was making dinner for himself and for Gou most of the time, and grew accustomed to putting the leftovers in the fridge for Mom without thinking twice. 

And then she told him in a way that suggested that it couldn’t be helped that Rin was just like his father, and that if he wanted to, she would help him be the best he could be in his second-choice profession. Mom came home late and later after being gone since the sun came up and wrote a lot of really long letters, and told him it was for his swimming. If she wrote nice enough letters, people might send Rin money for a chance to swim somewhere that Dad always wanted to swim. She called them _scholar-ships_ , and Rin assumed that meant the smart fishermen from his first job still owed him money for his residency.

What sort of kid would say _no_?! he shouted to his teammates, who all looked at each other uneasily. Australia was very far, and half of them could not pronounce it correctly, to Rin’s annoyance.

But he promised to write, so it would be okay. He’d always wanted to have pen pals. 

It was when Gou mailed him a photo of the _only_ tiger plush as big as she was that she _ever_ wanted from the big toy catalogue that mysteriously started showing up in the mail again only after Rin left (of course) squeezed tightly to her chest that Rin realized for the first time that their family was different.

Because that tiger plush was in the catalogue _every_ year for as long as Rin could remember, and it wasn’t anything special. He almost scored it second-hand for Gou through an elaborate series of lunch trades a few years prior until his barter partner’s baby brother stook claim on it and the entire thing fell through. The punk. 

A lot of families didn’t have dads or moms or sometimes _both_. Rin never thought it made them unique. He thought they ate the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner often because Mom just liked it, and it was only with Russel and Lori that he had something different for what seemed like every single meal for the first time. But it made the treats and special outings with Mom taste that much better, he reasoned. 

He thought getting to pick out one gift for their birthdays was what everyone did; his friends at Sano even agreed with him. When he went to his first birthday party ever at the ripe age of eleven, he learned that wasn’t true either, but all of their gifts were lame anyway.

Russel and Lori were home _a lot_. Practically home every moment that Rin was. When he asked them if they needed to go to work they laughed and said they already had. When he asked if he could get a job on the docks to help, they laughed more and said it wasn’t necessary. Fine; more time for him to swim (even though _Steward of Sydney_ sounded pretty cool, he had to admit).

One of the first complex words in English he applied to himself: poor. With that came a new set of eyes and heavy helping of hindsight, his maturity benchmarked by his beaming little sister and her stupid, _ugly_ tiger toy. 

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t angry, and that he didn’t skip phone calls to Mom for a few weeks in the wake of his revelation, and Rin was no liar like Mom. She lied a lot. For his entire life, she lied about their means, and made up stupid stories to convince them both that they were just like everyone else when they _weren’t_ and it took the catastrophic detonation of his self-worth and another few years of growing up to help him into the next revelation: Mom did her best.

She worked two jobs and never forgot a birthday, no matter how little she could contribute to it. She kept clean and sturdy clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads, even if they ate plain rice a lot. She scraped and hoarded every single yen to send him to Australia, and then scraped some more to make it up to Gou after that. She always believed in them and never told them they _couldn’t_ even when Gou declared she was going to be an astronaut despite her predisposition to motion sickness, even when Rin called her in tears and told her he had to come home and that he wasted and squandered all of her effort to send him across the world to realize his dream that never could be. 

She only told him that he’d done his best, and that he should be proud of himself because Dad would be, and it was what he needed to try again. 

Sometimes during his worst years, her telling him that was all that pushed him to get up and keep trying again and again and _again_ until one day his childhood suddenly happened yesterday and would never happen tomorrow _,_ and his anger over everything was only faded scar tissue.

He finds himself sitting at the rickety old foldout table in her house one day in the type of future he briefly believed he could never have, staring at his one and only gold medal laid out next to a bag of cheap and shitty take-out ramen for the three of them that he bought with his own money. As he waits for Mom and Gou to get back from shopping for a new pair of work shoes for Gou’s new job so they can all eat together for the first time in what seems to be forever, he pines briefly for the loss of his Stewardship title one last time, and celebrates everything else. 

Rin smiles and breathes in the familiar smells of his home as he belatedly moves to the kitchen to chop up a small bowl of green onion on the side, and digs deep in the cupboards for the chipped seashell-white bowls to serve their food in. 

Perhaps the best thing about everything leading up to this point is that they’re all able to laugh at the ridiculous display of take-out served in old porcelain.

**Author's Note:**

> [rlbmuT](http://iskabee.tumblr.com)


End file.
